The Nation: Cheer Up

Do you look back on America the Beautiful with nostalgia? On the
full-value dollar with an empty feeling in your wallet? Well, you
shouldn't. To do so is to submit to "sentimentality, prejudice and
myopia," according to Herbert Stein, 56, chairman of President Nixon's
Council of Economic Advisers. Speaking before an audience of bankers,
businessmen and educators in Richmond last week, Stein denounced
critics of the President's new budget for their negative vibrations.

People were wasting their "tears" over cuts in various programs, he
said. "The welfare state is not being liquidated," and unemployment,
though a problem, occurs largely among the young,...